TWICE, Stray Kids, and Park Jin Young Invited to Join Recording Academy as Grammy Voters

TWICE, Stray Kids, and JYP Entertainment founder Park Jin Young have been invited to join the Recording Academy as voting members, giving some of K-pop’s most visible global acts a formal voice in the Grammy Awards process.

JYP Entertainment said the invitations include Park Jin Young, all nine members of TWICE, and all eight members of Stray Kids. The company also said JYP Entertainment CEO Jeong Wook and Shin Hyun Kook, the company’s chief strategy officer and CEO of JYP America, were invited as professional members, a separate class for executives and industry workers who support music creators.

The announcement follows the Recording Academy’s latest membership invitation cycle, in which more than 4,000 music creators and professionals across genres, backgrounds, and disciplines were asked to join. For K-pop, the inclusion of two major JYP groups and the company’s founder is another sign that Korean pop artists are being folded more directly into the institutions that shape international music recognition.

What Voting Membership Means

Voting membership is significant because Grammy winners are chosen by eligible members of the Recording Academy. While an invitation does not guarantee nominations or awards for any artist, it gives accepted members the ability to participate in the peer-voting system that decides Grammy outcomes.

That distinction matters for Korean artists, whose global reach has often outpaced their representation in traditional Western award structures. TWICE and Stray Kids both built large international fanbases through touring, album sales, digital platforms, and English-language promotional activity, but Grammy recognition for K-pop artists has remained limited compared with the genre’s commercial and cultural footprint.

TWICE’s invitation arrives after years of steady expansion beyond South Korea and Japan into North America and other major markets. The group has increasingly positioned itself as a touring and recording act with an international audience, while maintaining the bright pop identity and performance-centered appeal that defined its rise under JYP Entertainment.

Stray Kids, meanwhile, have become one of the most prominent boy groups in the global K-pop market, known for self-produced music, aggressive performance style, and strong album sales. Their inclusion as voting members places the group’s members inside a professional body whose decisions can influence how different sounds and regions are recognized in mainstream music awards.

A Broader Grammy Shift Toward Asian Pop

The timing is notable because the Recording Academy recently announced a new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category for the 2027 Grammy Awards. The category creates a dedicated field for Asian pop releases, potentially giving artists from South Korea and other Asian music markets a clearer path to Grammy consideration.

The new category does not remove the challenge of competing within a U.S.-based awards system, but it does acknowledge that Asian pop has become too large and varied to sit only at the margins of existing genre classifications. K-pop’s expansion has also been driven by a professional ecosystem of producers, choreographers, visual directors, labels, and global distribution partners, not only by fan enthusiasm.

Park Jin Young’s invitation adds a historical layer to the announcement. As JYP Entertainment’s founder and a longtime artist, producer, and executive, he has been closely tied to the company’s development from a Korean music agency into a multinational entertainment business. His membership connects the current recognition of TWICE and Stray Kids with the longer industry strategy behind JYP’s overseas growth.

The professional-member invitations for Jeong Wook and Shin Hyun Kook also point to how the Recording Academy evaluates the infrastructure around artists. K-pop’s international presence depends heavily on management, localization, partnerships, and touring operations, and those behind-the-scenes roles increasingly intersect with the global music business that the Academy represents.

For fans, the immediate meaning is straightforward: TWICE, Stray Kids, and Park Jin Young have been recognized as eligible participants in one of music’s most influential peer institutions. For the industry, the development is part of a larger question about how quickly award bodies can adapt to music markets that are no longer centered on a single language, region, or promotional model.

Whether this leads to future Grammy nominations for JYP artists remains uncertain. But the invitations give Korean pop figures a seat inside the voting structure itself, and that may prove just as important as any single awards-season result.